< 1 minute readIn an interview with George Dobell for Cricinfo, the outgoing chief executive of the Professional Cricketers’ Association, Angus Porter, suggests that men’s cricket could adopt the points method used in women’s cricket where success in T20Is, ODIs and Tests is combined to decide the best side. Not the worst idea
Continue readingCategory: Australia
Mop-up of the day – runs down south
2 minute readAfter day-night Tests, the latest innovation in the ongoing Australia v New Zealand Test series has been additional opponents. Sri Lanka and the West Indies have been drafted in to keep things fresh, but they couldn’t tip the balance. Australia still had marginally the better day. New Zealand would have
Continue readingDay-night cricket and the fire in the bin
< 1 minute readAs a rule, if people aren’t moaning about the thing you feared they’d moan about and are instead moaning about something completely different, you’ve succeeded. The elimination of moaning is of course not a possibility. It’s like a pocket of air under wallpaper. The best you can do is displace
Continue readingNight-day cricket should be the next innovation
< 1 minute readThose watching the first day of the inaugural day-night Test between Australia and New Zealand will have been sorely disappointed. We were promised slapstick and catastrophe, but got neither. If you asked us to describe it, we’d say it looked very much like Test cricket, only with a pink ball.
Continue readingThe Mitchell Johnson bowling action – a nasty and effective and unreliable thing
2 minute readMitchell Johnson contributed some extremely interesting cricket and you can’t ask for much more than that from a player. Overall, his record is very good, but that long-term-very-goodness was created by opposing short-term extremes. At his best, Johnson was as exciting to watch as pretty much any cricketer ever. If
Continue readingThe Waca – fast bowlers’ graveyard
< 1 minute readAh, the Waca. Fast bowlers love it because it gives them an opportunity to bowl plenty of overs. Batsmen are terrified of it because of the humiliating possibility that they might not make a ton. The pitch has been so challenging in the second Test between Australia and New Zealand
Continue readingAggressive cricket can be all about playing really defensively
< 1 minute readWe’ve written about ‘aggressive cricket’ about a billion times, but that’s largely because – like a snipped clothing label that hasn’t quite been fully removed – it continues to irritate us. Different people mean different things by ‘aggression’ and also confuse cricketing aggression with actual aggression. The latest to say
Continue readingEngland’s one-day matches result in runs, apparently
< 1 minute readHere’s a freakish stat via Cricinfo’s S Rajesh: Since 2006, matches hosted in England have seen the third-highest run-rates in one-day internationals (ODIs). It doesn’t seem right, does it? Granted there are only a handful of countries hosting ODIs, so it’s not third out of a big bunch, but England
Continue readingUK considering military action in wake of Stokes dismissal
< 1 minute readDavid Cameron has not ruled out bombing raids against Australia in response to Ben Stokes being given out obstructing the field in the first one-day international. However, the UK Prime Minister says that a large-scale deployment of ground troops is unlikely. “Maybe if it had been a mankad and they
Continue readingBen Stokes out obstructing the field
< 1 minute readWe haven’t seen this incident yet, but it appears to be big news. That happens whenever someone’s dismissed in a weird way and when there’s also a ‘should he have been given out?’ element, you effectively get two stories for the price of one. As far as we can tell,
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